SIGNIFICANCE: John Roberts and Abraham Carlisle were victims of a politically motivated sentence for treason. The judiciary of Pennsylvania wanted to show its toughness toward collaborators with the enemy. Though guilty, they were no more so than other collaborators who escaped death.

The Revolutionary War was still in progress in late June of 1778, when the British army, because of a change in its strategy, abandoned Philadelphia and marched to New York. In British America's largest city, Philadelphia, they left a residue of property damage and hard feelings among American patriots toward those Philadelphians who had collaborated with the British during the year that they controlled the city.